How to Convince People to Agree with your Philosophies

You can't. I apologize for the misleading blog title, but you can't.

Here's why:

People are really stubborn. People hate being wrong and people would rather lie than be wrong.

Theists, you can't really convert atheists to theists and same to atheists, you can't really convert theists to atheists.

Every single atheist I have talked to has discovered through independent research and questioning that god doesn't exist. I know many atheists that openly try to get people to learn their perspective and learn that god really doesn't exist, but it doesn't work because people are not just going to up and change.

Getting into arguments about this stuff online is really pointless too, because you aren't going to change the other person's mind.

When was the last time a Jehovah's Witness actually convinced you at your door?

People change their religions when left alone. When I was a Christian I probably wouldn't have become an atheist if a group of atheists approached me and maybe if they had, I wouldn't have ever become an atheist because I would've had this prejudice against them. Maybe I would've.

Just stop telling me about your religion or beliefs because it's not going to change mine. If I am interested in them, I will ask you. Do not get proactive about this kind of stuff.

This doesn't even have to be about religion or theism/atheism. This can be about anything.

Even a kid trying to convince another kid the colour blue is better than the colour green wouldn't be very successful.

Of course there is the odd time when trying to convince another person of something does work but that is not the likely case.

Even though I realize I can't convince all my theistic friends and family to become atheist, it won't stop me from talking about atheism whenever I want to. I am just not going to try to proactively hand them brochures or lecture them.

People aren't just going to switch sides. It takes time to make these decisions. My change from Christian to Atheist was gradual. I was an Anglican Christian, Christian, Spiritual Christian, Spiritual, Agnostic, Agnostic Atheist and now I am Atheist. This all happened in maybe a 3 month time span.

People don't just wake up and think "I'll try mormonism!" or answer the door and think "Sure! I'd love to attend the Church of Latter Day Saints!".

Open-minded people might. But even they aren't going to let go of their stability of their beliefs until they are ready to leap.

It's not impossible to convince other people, but it is highly unlikely.

If you actually came here to find out how to convince people of your philosophies, here is one tip:

Get close to them, but not close enough in which you will argue with them because then they won't talk back and they aren't overly comfortable with you so they won't question you too much. I find this works well with door-to-door people because they get friendly with you but you don't know them well enough to punch them in the face when they say something you think is stupid.

AND FOR GOODNESS SAKES don't be hostile towards another person if you are trying to get them onto your side of a belief system. This happens all of the time on the internet and it doesn't fucking work out so stop wasting your time.

This was a very professional blog post. It was just in my mind for a few days and I just spewed it all out right now. Sorry, I am not editing it.

Do you have any techniques to convince people? Do you think I am wrong in thinking it is hard to convince people to agree with your philosophies?

Truth and Lying

The past few days I have been pondering on the subject of truth.

I was thinking about how important truth is to our society and how easy it is to become susceptible to lies. It's the easiest thing to hear a fake fact like "39% of people have yellow kitchens" and take it as truth just because it sounds real. This is called truthiness or wikiality. I recommend you do some reading on the word "wikilaity" which was coined by Stephen Colbert.

As I said, I was thinking about the importance of truth and since it's so easy to believe lies online that we are a society that is very-much-so based on lies as well as fact. I realized this a while ago and when I did I basically stopped myself in my tracks right there. I was mesmerized by this idea but I carried on with my life. When I realized this once again I thought "I should stop lying" but doing this is so hard. It is natural to lie.

We lie to ourselves all of the time. "Yes these pants fit" "Yes I can afford them" "Yes I can wear them to work" "Yes I can put them in the laundry" when really the answer is no. It's just stretching the truth.

I was thinking how these little lies aren't that bad. We can lie a little lie once in a while. I remember as a kid thinking how every small lie would always snowball into one big lie. This hasn't happened to me too often. The only time things snowball is when I lie about where I am because for some reason I have a hard time doing this.

I think lying is so common that we do it subconsciously. I am an atheist and I know god doesn't exist, so when I look at a (thinking) theist I think they are probably subconsciously lying to themselves. Maybe not, that is just my opinion. I just think perhaps theists will hear the facts but they just don't care and so they brush them off with lies.

Is it that bad to lie? I think sometimes it is, like when theists lie to themselves. This changes society as a whole. Perhaps 15% of the world population is non-religious/atheist/agnostic and approximately 29% of Canada's population is non-religious/atheist/agnostic but if people keep lying to themselves that number isn't going to increase as quickly as it should. Although in the past 10 years it has basically doubled.

See that? Those statistics up there. They could be lies because they seem easy to believe. I take them as fact, as truth. But the truth is I read them somewhere, a couple of sources but I don't know for a 100% fact whether or not they are fact. They could be made-up.

Plus surveys aren't reliable anyways because people can easily lie on them. People answer surveys based on the way the question is asked. If they are answering a survey based on ice cream consumption by a fitness guru at the gym they are probably going to lie saying they eat less ice cream rather than asking customers at an ice cream store, even if the same people were surveyed at both places.

So how can we tell truth and lies apart? We can't. This is why I am a skeptic. I try to accept as few things as possible as fact. I think we all have a good idea over what is real and what isn't but as a skeptic, I know that you can never really know.

We don't know. Another one of life's mysteries.

Everything you read out of a textbook can't be taken as fact. You may learn it in school but teachers and textbooks make mistakes, surveys are flawed and science experiments can go wrong.

"Man went to the moon" you say, but do you even know there is a moon? How do we not know that the government isn't projecting it into the sky. You haven't been into space to tell the difference, have you?

This is getting way too in depth for what I really wanted to talk about. Let me backtrack.

I want to say I think that little lies to ourselves like "This one chocolate bar won't hurt" are okay but they aren't. Lying to ourselves and lying to others doesn't lead to truth. Even if you think a small lie won't hurt anything, like being just one person lying about your religious stance or lying about your bra size while taking a survey, it does affect everything. You are a member of society, and even though you only represent one person, do you think you are the only one lying? No. Maybe. But it is unlikely.

Unlikely. This actually leads me to a new point (sorry for straying again) but certainty and impossibility don't exist. I used to just say that nothing is impossible. Anything can happen, you won't know until you see it. For example, you must be american born to be president but perhaps I will be the president if that law lifts (because I am Canadian). It is highly-unlikely but not impossible. I recently realized certainty also doesn't exist. You don't know that you aren't being controlled by little wires. You can't even know for sure that you exist.

Even though I just said even small lies are bad, will I always tell the truth? It is unlikely.

Anyways. Sorry for making your brain hurt.

See that? I just apologized for something I am not sorry for. I already lied.

Do you think it is okay to lie? When?

What does truth mean to you?

Annoyed Atheist

I was extremely annoyed yesterday, although it is mostly my fault.

I have inevitably been doing a lot of thinking about atheism, since I am writing a comedy book about atheism, but also because I decided to take Religious Studies in my first year at university.

Let me give you some background before I tell today's story. I am an (agnostic) atheist and I am pretty strong on my views. I was talking to somebody close to me about theism and atheism and how I am taking the Religious Studies course. 

I was explaining my reason for taking Religious Studies to this person and for your curiosity, it is for a few reasons:

1. I genuinely find religions fascinating

2. I feel like I will have more credibility than the average theist if I have taken a religion course, I feel like I might get something out of it

3. There is a 3rd year atheist course I want to take (which can be counted towards my Philosophy degree) but I have to have the 1st year credit to take it.

So I was explaining this (well the first and third reasons) to this person and then I jokingly said "Hey! At the end of first year I could change my major to Religion!" and they responded "Why would you do that?"

I actually took a little bit of offence to this, but I let it slip. I started talking about my majors again as well as what that might mean for me if I decide to go into teaching (which I likely will).

At one point in time, deep into the conversation this person said something along the lines of "You can't be a teacher if you think that".

This is making me furious just sitting here typing it. They were referring to me being an atheist. 

Excuse me? I can't be a teacher if I am atheist? And people wonder why theists frustrate me so much.

I tried to explain that as a teacher you have to be open minded and obviously if I were to ever teach a course (we were specifically talking about teaching a religion course) in high school that I would have to share all aspects and points of view of a subject, and as a teacher I can barely even share my opinion (which is part of the reason why I am not leaning towards NOT wanting to be a teacher). To be a teacher you must be open-minded, which I am fully aware of. This person seems to think I am going to start forcing atheism down people's throats in a classroom.

Anyways, I was attempting to explain this, but this person wouldn't shut up. They kept talking over me. This is when our conversation that led to debate which led to disagreement, then became an argument. I started shouting out to "shut up and let me talk" and this person wouldn't let me.

That is basically the end of this. I didn't get a chance to explain anything because they wouldn't SHUT UP. 

I am furious. I am annoyed. These little interactions with theists or even just people close to me, make me want to stomp out a puppy. 

This led me to cry a little. Not because we argued, I was literally crying because some people are so (for lack of a better word) STUPID and can't be open-minded. 

Sometimes when I talk atheism vs. theism I am offensive. I honestly don't care. I feel the need to push my limits because I look at theism almost like a societal crisis. A mass group of people believe in something that doesn't exist! Can you really blame me for wanting to stop it? 

I cry because I am so frustrated that people won't be open-minded to really realize god doesn't exist.

Although saying this to a theist means nothing, because they just try to rationalize me being atheist by saying I am the devil, by saying that I had a bad childhood or I am just mad at god. 

NO. I am just the only sober person in a world filled with idiots drunken and poisoned by theism.

I feel like to a theist right now that I am actually pretty funny because I seem like the idiot. Trust me, I'm not.

I think that my point in saying all of this is that I have realized (once again) that I can't control everyone. I feel like my ideas, opinions, etc., should be the world. I fully believe I am correct. But I am also 100% sure that everyone thinks the same about their own ideas. Back in my Grade 12 philosophy course I would always answer questions by first stating that there is no correct answer because everyone's views are different, and would go on to tell my views and explain why.

I just have to accept that not everybody is going to agree with me. I just hope that there are some groups of people that will listen to me.

I have 2 last little tidbits about atheism to dissolve away from my rant...

1. I was considering getting an atheist themed tattoo, mostly just because people's cross tattoos annoy me, but also because I am an atheist and I wanted to display it. I soon talked myself out of it because I rationalized that it is weird to display that I have a belief in something that is a belief that something doesn't exist. It's like getting a tattoo saying "Frog-birds don't exist" to me. So I am not getting it, because I think it's weird.

2. My book. I shall reveal a little more. Not too much, though. I don't want my blog to become my process and ideas of my book. I already said that:

1. I am writing a book about atheism

2. It is comical

Now I shall reveal sort of the premiss. It is directed for the atheist reader, although some aspects may apply to theists. It's sort of a how-to book for atheists, but it is all completely bogus stuff, making it funny. Sort of. I may change some parts, I have barely started it. It is still in the brainstorming process. It will forever be in the brainstorming process, until it is published (which I hope someday, it will be). 

Does anybody else get really annoyed when someone has the complete opposite idea about something that you believe in? 

Why did man create god?

I am briefly straying from my 30 day writing challenge. I will do the 21st-23rd, tomorrow. 

I need to talk about something that has been on my mind (again).

That would be religion.

Or, rather, theism, as I have established before that religion is just a societal group, that happens to share an identical view on god. 

I am very interested in why people believe in god. There are so many reasons that are simple and some more complex: 

- That is what people were taught and they choose to believe it

- Don't want to be outcasts from society/ just following social norms

- It seems logical to them somehow

- They are optimistic about heaven or believe it exists so they believe in god just in case it does exist

More complex ideas I've talked about before are like

- People use the concept of god to rid themselves about what they feel bad about doing (sort of like apologizing without actually apologizing to the person you've hurt)

- People are drawn to the concept because they like this idea of hope, after a hard time in their life

- people think society will fall apart and act immorally without religion 

People don't just believe in god. There is a reason. Even like the statement "people don't just believe in iPads". Either they believe in them because they have one, have seen one, are gullible, and they trust their senses to be honest to their minds. 

Someone who says "I just believe in god because he exists" has to have a reason. Whether it was the way they were raised, they are getting false hope psychologically... Who knows.

Today I've furthered my thinking... Beyond "why do people believe in god?" I wonder "why and when did people create god?"

Obviously a high percentage of people are theists, for reasons I have just discussed... But I want to know why and when people created this idea of a superior being.

I read an article about a study ill link to here later if I remember, about how people are always dependent on another, so creating a god can relieve this need of dependency on something.

I want to know the first mind who thought up the idea of a god.

I've always imagined it to be some authority figure like a king or something, who gained his authority by lying and saying a man, the creator, is speaking to him, and therefore this man and now king may rule. There is no proof of that, I just think that could be a theory. It would make a goods historical-fiction novel, actually.

I don't know. I'm going to keep on pondering.

Why do you think man created god?

Views on Atheism + Reflection on "The Trouble With Atheism" documentary

A continuing post on my views on atheism and theism.

I watched a documentary called The Trouble With Atheism (watch here), which essentially criticizes atheism. I was reluctant to watch it when I first came across it, because of my strong views on atheism. I decided to suck it up and watch it anyways.

I like documentaries because you can easily follow a storyline, with a distinct voice. You follow a person's real perspective. It is so hard to be a un-biased watcher of any documentary because of the power of the voice, and how convincing it can get. But this is also why I hate documentaries.

This documentary, in my mind, was horrible. It didn't come up with too many arguments actually against atheism. First, it talks about how atheists criticize other religions for being hateful, when atheists are hateful themselves.

Let me point out for the first time; atheism doesn't mean "I hate religion" it means "I don't believe in god" therefore the voice of the documentary, Liddle's, argument is invalid.

It goes on to look at scientific reasons as to why we are here, and then Liddle will say "What happened before the big bang theory?" and what happened before all of these scientific things.

The end truth is; we don't know. It is like Schrodinger's cat, you don't know whether the cat is dead or not until you open the box. You don't know if god is real or not... but there is no box to open, you just can't tell. This is why agnosticism is more supported in this documentary than theism. We don't know how earth was created. We just don't.

At least twice in the documentary, Liddle asks/tells atheists that they are being "rather arrogant" about their views. Some atheists call the belief in religion "stupid". I agree, but that is not my point here. My point here is why the hell is Liddle calling atheists arrogant when he himself is being arrogant, even if simply by asking the atheists why they are arrogant?

What?

The one scientist responded something like (paraphrasing) "I don't care if I am being arrogant, because I am right". Way to go.

The funny thing about the atheism vs theism debate is it doesn't matter what side has more solid evidence than the other because in the end, even if atheism has 1,000,000 pieces of evidence that supports there is no god, and theism has 500,000, that evidence doesn't actually make it more real... we still don't know for 100% CERTAIN. The amount of evidence either side has, doesn't matter.

I am an agnostic atheist, and I think that god doesn't exist. Logic makes more sense to me than a human creator.

Actually, the documentary did put one thing in my head, into words. It went something like: "Religion hasn't been passed on because it is logical or because people believe in it, but because it gives a sense of comfort and structure to society". 

I've been trying to say that the reason why religion has survived this long is because of a psychological way of making someone feel better about them self or more "moral". The word "comfort" is what I was looking for! Aha! Thank-you documentary.


My final points always seem to come to two things, every time.
1. Our fear of chaos
2. Us not wanting to be wrong

1. Towards the end of the documentary, it made the point I hate the most: that atheists are not always moral beings. It was said that by taking god out of the equation, that a magical utopia won't just happen, because of human nature. We still do bad, even without god, and even with god, within our belief system in society. Maybe some theists just believe in god in fear of chaos, and want these religious moral values instilled in society, still just so we don't have chaos everywhere. To many people, without a god, we don't have morals. Without an afterlife, we have nothing to act good for. I am not a moral person, well I am, but not always. I just think that we should act upon our natural instincts. Sure, I don't want to be killed, but technically within nature, killing is natural. I don't fear chaos. Maybe this is why I don't fear labelling myself as an atheist.

2. People naturally hate being wrong. We may bring up a point, argue it with another, halfway believe we are wrong, and continue arguing it anyways because we don't want to lose our pride. We don't want to lose our pride.  Losing our pride and losing an argument means we are wrong. So if a person believes for decades in their life that god exists, and suddenly believe god doesn't exist, that would mean admitting they are wrong. It is a much easier choice to make to keep on believing in god. This is one of the reasons why I value Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote from Self-Reliance so much "Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though in contradict every thing you said today".

Have you watched the documentary? What did you think?

Theism

Personally, I identify myself as an agnostic atheist. I was raised an Anglican Christian, but somewhere around 3-5 years ago, I started questioning religion and the belief in a god/gods.

This blog post might be a lot for some people to grasp. Even I am having a hard time coming up with the words I'm looking for, so bear with me.

In philosophy class over the summer, we talked about whether there is a god, and what that god is like, so if the god was omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (being able to be anywhere at any time), etc. We talked about the image of a god (what he looks like), etc.

In history we talked a bit about the history of christianity, and this actually is what pushed me to being an atheist, because of how ignorant (I think that ignorant is a poor word choice, but I can't think of any other) all sorts of religions, including christianity, were throughout history.

I dislike the role of the churches, priests, the study of the bible, and pretty much anything surrounding religion.

But if I completely disconnect the idea of a god from any religion, it seems more believable.

I think that there is a possibility there is a god. As you can see throughout history, there have been all sorts of religions and beliefs, christianity, judaism, islamic, even greek polytheism... so many that it would take me forever to list. All together, though, there is an idea in there, of a god.

Sociologically and psychologically speaking, I think it is a viable point to state that people in today's day, use god as sort of a "get out" from their realities and a source of hope to look towards. I think people think god is very omnipresent when they say "God will show me the way" "God will present the opportunities to me", etc. I don't believe god is omnipresent.

But as I said, it is a common belief throughout history that there is some powerful creator or creators of the world.

I think if there is a powerful creator of the world, like a god, he/she isn't human-like. I just find it weird for a human to create other humans... well I guess that's what happens naturally, but I meant the creation of humans in "magical" ways, not reproduction. The greeks believed the gods to be actual humans living on mount olympus. Very human like. Others have worshipped human-like figures, that aren't totally human.

I guess I believe in some form of scientific theory as to why creation happened. But still I don't think I'll ever be convinced

But still, is there a god, nevertheless if earth was created "scientifically" (poor word choice again), and god is not omnipresent, is there some moral code given by someone all-knowing or all-powerful we have to look to?

I don't think there is a moral code, I don't think that god or any powerful figure has some form of "how to live" book, tablet or etch-a-sketch out there. I definitely do not think that if there is a god, that they are "all-powerful". I don't believe in people having power over one-another. People typically see god as a "good guy", but personally, I don't think that ANYTHING even a god should have power or control over any other thing. I don't care if you are Obama and a piece of grass, nothing has control over any other thing. I don't think that a "good guy" god could be all-powerful.

So that leaves all-knowing. Is there an all-knowing god? If god exists, is he all-knowing? This is honestly the most possible thing I would be willing to believe. Maybe a god, maybe a human, but I think it could be possible for a person/god to know everything, supernaturally. I think this is the most legitimate characteristic for a god to have, if there is a god.

But still, I don't want to believe in a god/gods, no matter the religion. I don't think there is a powerful figure that rules over all.

So this is why I am agnostic. I don't know if a god exists or not. I kind of hope that a god doesn't exist. I don't pray. But sometimes I think, maybe a god could exist. One time a person I absolutely hate said "I think there are a lot of things in this world we don't know about" which is totally true, new things are discovered all of the time. Maybe a god exists. Maybe he/she is powerful. But at this point, I am not totally convinced.

This same person I hate was talking about how religions have made a lot of mistakes, historically, and I think this is why I always want to jump to the atheistic argument. I hate how the people of a religion have been cruel throughout the ages, I know there are plenty of nice people, and helpful people, but just looking back a few hundred years ago, the missionaries from the UK coming over to Canada, and trying to convert the natives/citizens of "Canada" to christianity/catholicism. They were all skeptical, but when churches are built by people, and they don't want a war, and they want to trade with christians, they are going to convert.

I think a lot of theists in this century are very nice, quite often they are charitable, giving, nice,  following the morals of their religion. I know that there are some immoral or amoral theists out there, that purposely spread hate against others, as well. So I really can't generalize a stereotype of all theists, especially since it depends on the religion.

I compare Canada to Greek and Roman times, a lot. To those who don't know too much about history, Canadian society is actually very similar to both Greek and Roman times. In Greece, they believed in polytheism, as stated. Zeus was the main god, the son of Rhea and Cronos, the children of "Chaos" and the "Skies" who were the actual originals. But the first group of children, including Rhea and Cronos were the titans. When they were liberated by Zeus et. al, they became the gods. The Greeks worshipped these gods with temples, events (the olympics were created to honour Zeus), and then as time went on, they slowly stopped worshipping these gods, because they realized how unscientific, unrealistic it was. They believed they were just myths. They stopped worshipping them, and just as an example, the olympics were stopped. Eventually, what most people know about greece, is the times of philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the times of democracy. A lot of rational thought came out hundreds and hundreds of years after they stopped.

Approximately 400 years after the death of Socrates, Jesus was born, to our knowledge, at 3AD. Now, I

I guess to finalize my point, I am still remaining an agnostic atheist. To me, this means that I am basically an atheist, with just a little bit in my mind that "Just maybe a god exists". I have just been thinking about theism a lot lately. I think theism is a really interesting idea, and I think it would be fun to believe in, but I just don't see much credibility to it, as I talked about, previously.

I don't think a god gives hope or opportunity. I think that you give yourself hope, and that if you are a theist, you mistake it as sort of a supernatural/god given gift. I wrote about this in philosophy, the idea that people who believe in god get these ideas in their heads of something good that seems hopeful or unrealistic, and that they think it is from god. The idea of god in their heads, although unreal in my belief, gives them hope. I don't think this is a bad thing. This idea in this paragraph I am trying to work on better. I want to really clarify it as a well-known philosophical/psychological theory, because I have never heard of any other person talk about this before.

I think this is because people are afraid of offending people and criticizing religious dogma.

This brings me to my final point, to connect this all back to my life. In my essay in law, we had to write about assisted suicide. I established myself as "For" assisted suicide, and for one of the points you have to show an opposing viewpoint and then rebut it. I chose to put in the religious perspective. I got 100% on the essay but my teacher wrote "I allowed the religious C.A. but try to remain steadfast in legal dogma" in the comments on my essay. My philosophy teacher also had reminded us of this.

But I really hate this. I hate how people are afraid of offending others. It is just such a natural thing to do. I think that offending people is mean, but it can also be a wakeup call. I don't consider myself blunt, I just know that I have the right to state what I want to state. This can be difficult in school. Although, I did get 100% on my law essay, so even though the topic probably made my teacher uncomfortable, it was relevant, so luckily he was unbiased and gave me the grade.

The difference between theism and religion

Theism is the belief in a god/gods.

Religion is a collection of beliefs, understandings, and thoughts about the universe, and usually has a belief in god or gods.

You cannot prove theism, yet. There is no solid proof that a god or gods exist.

But religion, can be proved. Religion has existed. There have been thousands of religions, meaning groups that practice their collective beliefs.

Just because religion is true, doesn't make theism true. But, that is not what I am talking about in this blog post.

I do not generally like religion. I dislike the modern church. I believe scriptures, bibles, etc., to be fictional stories created a long time ago. Religion has been deeply flawed, historically.  When catholics from Europe came over to Canada during the great migration, and even before then when the UK (Britain) was trying to populate Canada with Catholics, to convince the people the be Catholic. Tjhey were hesitant to leave their native beliefs, but they eventually switched. Why? I believe the main reason to be that the natives and the europeans wanted to trade, and the europeans wouldn't trade with them unless they joined their religion. They send missionaries, built churches, and people slowly converted, so they could trade their furs with the european's silver goods, like needles and knives.

My point here is that the religion just came over and took over. This was one of the more peaceful missions.

Many missions ended in violence, because other areas of the world weren't as tolerant to new religions coming and telling them what to believe, and the new religions coming were insistent on them converting.

All of the blood shed, and immoral behaviour provided throughout history, by assorted religions, leads me to dislike religion.

I'm not hating on a specific religion. All religions are historically flawed.

I would say now, these churches aren't violent, like they used to be. There still are some violent churches, practices and religions. But arguably, less.

I still refuse to commit to a religion.

Now, theism. You do not have to be religious to believe in a god or gods. Religions tend to give out a guideline about what their god is like, omnipresent, omniscient, etc., which makes it easy for the theist to believe, if something seems more realistic.

Believing is weird to me. Like you believe a certain religion's interpretation of who god is, what he is like, what he looks like, etc.

I was just trying to imagine if I believed in god, what he would be like.

This is how religions have split throughout time, I guess. Thinking about what god is actually like, or more specifically, Jesus.

But theism itself, is not really a religion. It is a belief. One can be a theist, and not be religious.

I suppose one could be atheist and have a religion too. For example, lets say an atheist begins attending an anglican church. Sure, the anglican churches' belief is in god, but perhaps this person just enjoys going to church, reading the scriptures, educating them self about the moral aspects of the religion, and not the theistic. This person would then be religious, but atheistic.

But I am not a theist. I am an agnostic atheist. Essentially I am really just an atheistic skeptic. I am almost resolutely atheist. But there is always that little bit of doubt in there, because as I said previously, there is technically no proof there is, or isn't a god. So that's why it's "agnostic atheist".

My point here is just that religion and theism are two different things. Quite often they go hand-in-hand. But not always. I just felt this needed to be distinguished. I've never read anything before about a distinguishment, and I just kind of realized it a few weeks ago, that the two are completely different things.

Just as a final point, I really don't know much about religions, individually. I find them interesting. But generally, when I research and look at religion, I look at it with sociological, historical philosophical and psychological eyes, not really religious eyes, therefore I don't really know much about the actual rituals by religions, I just know more about their philosophies, past histories, effects on society and the individual. Even that I know very slim on.